"the apostle of the Christian Faith in Cebu." In 1566-67, he also made voyages to adjacent islands, mainly Panay, and preached there as well. In 1572 he became the Augustinian regional superior in the Philippines. While in Cebu, de Rada had begun to study Chinese. In 1574, he acted as an interpreter to a group of Chinese merchants who visited Manila. He later proposed a plan to conquer China that was never realized. Legacies On June 26, 1575 de Rada and Jeronimo Marin, OSA, accompanied a delegation of officials to China. They reached the port of Amoy (Xiamen) in Hokkien province on July 5, and visited a number of cities. The group returned to Manila on October 28, 1575. De Rada wrote detailed observations on the Chinese people and their way of life. In 1578 de Rada was once again placed on an expedition by the governor of Manila; this was to Borneo, where there was rivalry within the family of the sultan. The expedition sailed from Manila on March 3, 1578, but was not successful. On the return voyage many people in the expedition got sick. De Rada was one of those less fortunate, and died at sea on the 12th of June shortly before the ship reached Manila. He was only forty-five years of age. De Rada is much remembered as a great defender of the Filipino people against injustice of Spanish officials at the local level. A key document in this matter was his Parescer del Provincial fray Martin de Rada, agostino, sobre las coasa de estas tieras ("About the abuses committed against the natives in the collection of tributes"), dated at Manila, June 21, 1574. See also Gaspar da Cruz, a Dominican who visited China some years prior to de Rada Juan González de Mendoza, whose book (1585) is largely based on de Rada's account of his expedition to China and the materials he had brought from there Boxer Codex (1590), also based on books brought over by de Rada from China and illustrations of accounts possibly personally instructed by de Rada. References Sources Policarpo F. Hernández, OSA, "A Church Built for the Ages Fuses Two Alien Cultures," in Search, The Augustinian Journal of Cultural Excellence (Makati) I (2004), pp. 45–55. ; . These two volumes are a reprint of the 1588 English edition, edited by Sir George T. Staunton, Bart.; introduction by Richard Henry Major.